


Mayfly and December

by falsechaos



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-26 19:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsechaos/pseuds/falsechaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony wants to take it all apart.</p><p>Burn it down and grind it down, tear theories apart until they are a scattering of symbols and syllables. Break down the laws and find the atomic parts and smash them against one another to see what would happen.</p><p>He wants to see how bright it will burn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mayfly and December

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2013 Frostiron Big Bang.
> 
> With thanks to Chaperoned for helping tease a full warren out of a single plot bunny and Kimli, who joined in the nagging.
> 
> And a very special thanks to my artist who created a wonderful piece of art for this mess of a fic:
> 
> <http://thedeathchamber.livejournal.com/16751.html>

"Straighten up."  
  
Tony slouches further.  
  
"I won't have you embarrassing me here."  
  
"Never said I was gonna."  
  
Obadiah pinches the bridge of his nose. "'Going to.'"  
  
"Never said I was _going to_."  
  
Another dinner party. It's a benefit or a memorial or someone trying to get money from someone else and Tony really doesn't see the difference. They're all doing something for someone else's name but their own personal benefit. Ambassadors from Alfheim and Nornheim and all the Heims that count, all the ones that look Aesir and dress Aesir or play act it sincerely enough the Aesir can pat them on the head and say 'good effort.' Of them all, Tony and the other Midgardians are both closest and furthest, visually indistinguishable from the Aesir save for small tells that set Tony's teeth on edge.  
  
They wear leathers that creak when they should have been worn soft, fabrics the wrong shade or the wrong weave, metal too bright or too dull. Runes that spell out nothing at all or garbled phrases he can't translate. Bits and bobs that shine and twinkle like paste jewelry instead of proper medals or ornaments. Those are the ones the ambassadors from the Realm Eternal look at with tiny smiles of amusement.  
  
Obadiah wears a simple tunic cut along elegant Asgardian lines and made from very Midgardian silk. An assistant helped him chose it and to decipher the many possible messages it could send.  
  
Tony wears slacks and a carelessly buttoned dress shirt, suit jacket tossed over the back of his chair. He chose it himself an hour after he should have shown up for the dinner.  
  
"Sit up straight or go sulk in a corner," Obadiah says.  
  
Tony opts for the corner.  
  
Obadiah tries to catch him on the way over, but Tony shrugs him off and continues walking.  
  
He's not old enough to drink the interesting punch and too young (by so many standards) to join the interesting conversations. Just old enough to consider that a challenge and a slight when he has so much to say and so much to offer if only anyone would _l_ _isten_. But it's too late to back out and too soon to sneak off and Tony starts running thaumaturgic conversion algorithms in his head just to stay awake.  
  
Magic just doesn't make sense. There and not there, empirically and unequivocally proven to exist by the Nine Worlds and utterly absent from Midgard. It is measured and studied and theorized and none of it is anything a human can wrap their head around in practical form outside of numbers and abstract thought.  
  
So baubles and trinkets from Asgard and the other realms flood Midgard, bright stones and healing stones, tiny miracles humans could hold in the palms of their hands. None of it replicated or duplicated, none of it bearing tiny stamps of "Made in" any place that could be said to be on Midgard. None of it anything humans can shape or create for themselves. His father has made an empire in peddling such wares, in making clever devices that could harness and amplify those baubles and trinkets. Pasting them onto Midgard technology like cheap jewels or stuffing them inside like batteries.  
  
Tony wants to take it all apart.  
  
Burn it down and grind it down, tear theories apart until they are a scattering of symbols and syllables. Break down the laws and find the atomic parts and smash them against one another to see what would happen.  
  
He wants to see how bright it will burn.  
  
He slouches back in his chair and props his feet up on another.  
  
"That's hardly gentlemanly behavior."  
  
Tony flips his middle finger at the stranger. (It's a gesture he's sad hasn't caught on in the other realms yet.)  
  
"Nor is that."  
  
The stranger is a good head and a half taller than Tony's lanky teenage frame, glossy black hair brushed back away from a sharp face and bright green eyes. An impeccable suit and tie that hit the sweet spot of high fashion without trying too hard to be a trend setter, classic without being old fashioned. He looked like one of Howard's more expensive reserve lawyers.  
  
"One a scale of one to ten, how many fucks do you think I give?" Tony says.  
  
The stranger smacks Tony's ankles with a cane and ignores the indignant yelp that follows. Tony is too shocked at the transgression to do more than gawp when the stranger sits down next to him. "Roughly as many I have left to give, I imagine."  
  
This is annoying and an invasion of his space and blatantly disrespectful. Naturally, Tony finds it fascinating. "So who the hell are you supposed to be?"  
  
"Luke Smythe," the stranger says. He arches an eyebrow and his lips quirk in a grimace of a smile.  
  
"Odd name."  
  
"I find it rather common myself," Luke says.  
  
Tony's turn to smile, fierce and full of teeth. "Maybe for Midgard. But as long as it's the name on Dad's guest list, why should I care?"  
  
There's a cup of tea in Luke's hand that Tony hadn't noticed before. Something that steams lightly and smells of spice at any rate. "And am I supposed to be someone else?"  
  
"Maybe." Tony shrugs, a careless roll of his shoulders that makes the back of the chair dig into his neck. "You're not from Midgard at any rate."  
  
A look of faint amusement crosses Luke's face and sets Tony's teeth on edge before it disappears behind a sip of tea. "My, my, whatever gave me away?"  
  
"You showed up looking like you gave the wrong sort of shit what you looked like." Tony sits up and his hands are loose in his lap to keep from clenching them into fists. "Like you stepped out of a magazine or something, everything just so and perfect but you've got that same smirk as everyone else around here that's from way out of town. Like we're cute and you're slumming it. It's a shit poker face if I can tell it's a poker face, never mind what's going on in your head." He's flushed with triumph and indignation.  
  
"Clever. I should expect nothing less from the son of Howard Stark."  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
Luke tilts his head, an odd little cant that could pass for Midgardian if only on a cat. "A pleasant conversation, perhaps?"  
  
"No, see, that's not how it's going to work tonight. Dad's over there." Tony jabs a finger at his father who already has a small crowd laughing right on cue off across the room. "That's the guy you want to shmooze with. I could see through this bullshit when I was three, for fuck's sake. You want his wallet or connections, it's quicker just to ask _him_."  
  
"If I wanted his wallet or connections I would have had them five minutes after meeting him." Flat and cold and a simple statement of fact like gravity or magnetism. "I wanted to talk to _you_." Something warm and smelling of spice is pressed into Tony's hands and Tony finds himself holding a cup identical to Luke's. "Money and connections are indeed valuable, but so is _talent_. Something your father possesses in a tragic limited abundance."  
  
Tony snorts and turns the cup around and around in his hands. "'Limited abundance,' huh?" This is a tactic they've started to use more often, praising and belittling Howard in the same breath while trying to flatter Tony and fan the flames of a father/son rivalry that simply didn't exist. "Let me guess, I have such amazing potential and I'm going to inherit such a vast empire, now is a pretty good time to start making friends, right? While the old man is still alive and well and I've got time."  
  
"Perhaps a better time to choose your enemies."  
  
His knuckles turn white around the cup. "And what's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"It's hardly a threat," Luke said with a snort. "I would make a poor ally, but even I have better taste than _that_." He leans back in his stolen chair, long legs neatly crossed. "That is a matter in which one rarely has choice. But given that you've spoken of your awareness of time, perhaps now is the time to decide who _won't_ be wise to ally yourself with after the departing of your dear father."  
  
"I dunno, that sounds specific enough to be a threat." The words are tight in his throat and his mouth is frozen in a rictus smirk.  
  
Luke waves a hand and shakes his head. "Howard has time, yet. But all the more reason to act when you have leisure and not when the wolves are at your throat."  
  
"Asgard."  
  
"Pardon?"  
  
"Asgard, one of the high and mighty ones, right? Maybe some sort of nobility?" It's a guess and for all Tony knows the stranger could just as easily be from any of the Heims and Luke wouldn't be at all out of place of any of the odd lot. Something about the smile and the poise, however, the deliberate slips of amusement and curiosity. A poker face that hides another.  
  
Then Luke smiles again, sharp and wild and it reaches his eyes and turns them poison bright and Tony shivers despite himself. It's a predator's grin. "Close. So very close. You're the first to guess so close. Not quite, but close." Luke leans over into Tony's space, breath hot in Tony's ear and hand tight on his shoulder. "If it makes you feel any better, your father guessed Alfheim."  
  
Tony leans away and Luke's hand remains on his shoulder. His mouth is dry and he licks his lips. "Should I be yelling for an adult right now?"  
  
"If it amuses you, but I doubt it would make a difference."  
  
And it wouldn't.  
  
The room is quiet now, not even the white noise of distant across the room. No shuffle of chairs or scuff of feet, no scraping of silverware against plates. Muted colors and muted smells, all of it slow and gentle and dreamlike, the lack of it all snapping acutely against his sense only when it was brought to his attention.  
  
"You could be such a _clever_ little thing if you'd just mind the important details." Luke's voice is soft and hushed in a manner that has nothing to do with the pallor cast over the room. Intimate. "I made a deal with your father and while I am quite satisfied with the return on my investment, I do believe it's time to move on."  
  
Tony feels something tight and hot coil in his gut and he sets his cup carefully aside. "That probably wasn't safe to drink anyway," he says. He feels the curve of Luke's smile against his ear.  
  
"See? Clever."  
  
"What sort of investment? Thought you said you'd be a poor ally or something." The words tumble out loose but steady, no tremor in his throat or his hands and he's proud of himself for that despite the tight set of his jaw.  
  
Luke's hand is cool on his shoulder. "A patron of sorts."  
  
"Patron."  
  
"Yes." Luke draws those cool fingers across Tony's brow. "I will invest in you and you will make me great things, Anthony."  
  
No one's ever said his name like that before. Soft and full of promise and challenge. Tony wonders when he became old enough for people to start trying _this_ tactic on him. He wonders if something like that even matters to someone from Asgard. Everyone from Midgard is an infant compared to them.  
  
"I--"  
  
"No. No answer now. There's a viper right in front of you and you can't see it yet. Clever, but not quite enough."  
  
"Why me?" Tony says, helpless.  
  
"Because I want to see how bright you burn."  
  
Gentle lips brush against his ear, too close for an accident and too soft for a kiss and Tony jerks around to face him and the room explodes with noise again.  
  
No one sitting next to him.  
  
He's left holding an empty cup of tea.  
  
\-----  
  
Howard Stark dies the next year.  
  
Tony learns just what time is worth to someone from Asgard.  
  
He throws himself into his studies.  
  
Obadiah couldn't be more proud.  
  
\-----  
  
He goes to MIT. Drops out. Re-enrolls. His money and his test scores are enough he could repeat the process as many times as he wanted. Tony thinks about the man from Asgard and what it's like to have such time. Did it slip through his fingers like sand? Tony wonders if, instead, it was like being stranded in the desert. A year passes by in a haze of classes and parties and the dull background noise of Obadiah making promises and keeping most of them. It's Tony's business and Tony's companies and Tony's stockholders, but it's just so much easier to sign whatever Obadiah waves at him and let someone else deal with that particular headache until he's eighteen and has to do it whether he likes it or not.  
  
\-----  
  
Eighteen and officially CEO and face of the company. Another party, one he doesn't want and one he can't get out of. He'd be happier if he could just go back to his workshop, back to grease beneath his nails and the sharp snapping smell of a butane torch filling his nose. Back to iron and alloys and runic circuits, trying to rewrite magic and science and blur the line between the two of them until  
  
"You've done us all proud, my boy!"  
  
he can drown everything else out and he's left with only firefly sparks of inspiration painted across his brain like constellations.  
  
Obadiah claps Tony on the shoulder and Tony feels his face stretch into the old familiar mask without any effort at all. Tony's hand waves and his fingers press against his lips to blow a mocking kiss to everyone seated in front of him. All distant and removed and second-hand. Thirty-two hours without sleep and the burn of scotch on his tongue, but he's gotten a lot of practice at standing up straight and trotting around like a good little show pony on demand. Obadiah's fingers clamp down and squeeze every time Tony threatens to sway.  
  
"Don't you dare make a fool out of us now," Obadiah growls quick and hushed. "Just smile and wave and we'll scrape you off the floor when it's over."  
  
Tony blows another kiss at a knot of girls screaming by the door. He thumps Obadiah on the shoulder and sends the older man stumbling forward. "Love you too, old man." Grumbled and sharp and sincere in the same breath, exasperated as one could be only with a father figure. He moves too fast for Obadiah to snag his sleeve with any degree of grace and folds himself into the crowd.  
  
It's a tight press of bodies and hands smacking him on the shoulders, on his back, loud voices and empty congratulations and he drinks it all in for lack of any other reason to be there. They all mean it in their own ways, he supposes. All of them sincere even if not from the direction they claim to be. Honest in their own self-interest. Tony can almost admire that. Someone with bright eyes and soft hands and pointed ears tucks herself at his side and Tony dazzles her with a smile. That's certainly honest.  
  
The hours blur together.  
  
A girl at each arm now and Tony's close to enjoying his own party.  
  
"Can anyone here... Here, hold this," he says to the one on the right and passes her his drink. Something fruity and spiked and really, if they were going to do that they really should have just brought a proper keg. "Can anyone here tell me what happens when you discharge a bright stone into a block of impure iron?" His words have the precise edge of someone trying not to slosh his syllables around and he's only standing because of the people pressing around him. "Anyone at all?"  
  
Some smart ass in the back chimes in with, "It blows up?"  
  
"Right!" Tony says. "Someone buy that man a car, on the house, on me!" And they love him for it, they really do, with all the sincerity of a silk flower's scent. "What happens--" He sways and someone hoots and grabs at his collar to haul him back up. "What happens when it's a _pure_ block?  _Pure_ iron?"  
  
"Blows up bigger?"  
  
"Nothing," Tony says. "Nothing happens at all!" He tips back his head and laughs fever bright and panic loud and it rolls out of him until the laughter around him scatters and turns soft. Tony licks his lips and tastes salt and spice. "Nothing happens at all," he says to the nervous silence around him. It's funny and it isn't and he tugs his arm free of one girl and reclaims his drink from the other. No effort at all to tip it up and drink it down like a drowning man.  
  
Green eyes.  
  
Green eyes, sharp and disapproving.  
  
Luke or Laurence or whatever he said his name was.  
  
"This is deplorable behavior."  
  
"Exactly the point." Tony grins at him and waves a hand at someone large and burly and probably a security guard. "Somebody get this guy a beer! No car, he looks too pissy for a car."  
  
Somebody (they're all Somebody, nameless and faceless and Tony can only tell them apart by the fluttering of their hands) gets Luke a beer.  
  
Luke glares at the beer and at Tony and suddenly everything is bright and hilarious again and Tony laughs at him for it. "Lighten up, you asshole! Plenty of time to enjoy a party, right? Live a little!" Somebody presses a cold bottle to Tony's hand and he salutes the crowd with it. "Or live a lot, am I right? All you special snowflakes slumming it on Midgard!"  
  
The crowd murmurs and there's an edge to it and Tony grins sharper.  
  
"Hey, I just call it like I see it, right?" Tony laughs. "And the way I see you, you lot are just here for--"  
  
"Nullification."  
  
"What." It's flat and heavy enough to weigh down any inquisitive lilt that might have crept in Tony's voice.  
  
"If you discharge a brightstone through pure iron, the energy is nullified," Luke says. "Not quite the same as 'nothing' but I see where the two points can be confused." He takes a sip of his beer and wrinkles his nose at it.  
  
"That man! That man just sniffed at his beer!" Tony waves his own around a bit wildly and foam flecks his hands. "Don't pretend you didn't see it! We all did!" he crows.  "Wait, what am I drinking?" He snorts over his bottle and shoves it away. "A Pabst. Somebody brought me a Pabst. What kind of... No wonder. I'd be sniffing at that horse piss, too." Tony peels away from the crowd and stumbles his way over to Luke and slings an arm around the man's shoulder. "Tell you what, Buddy. You still don't get a car, but damned if I'm gonna let a guest at my party go the night and not get shit faced. You and me, we're gonna do this proper!"  
  
And the faceless mass of Somebodies cheer as Tony calls for a free round for everyone and drags Luke away.  
  
Tony doesn't stumble on the way down to his workshop. He sways and the world swims around him, but then it always does, twisting and turning and excruciatingly glorious for all its potential. He pushes Luke towards the wall and hides the lock to his workshop with his body. Magical locks are all the rage, fiddly little things that respond to drops of blood or the owner's voice and Tony had long ago decided to hell with that, he'd have manual, he'd have a code, he'd have a damned _puzzle_ and anyone that cracked it honest earned at least a peek at the inside of his workshop before the security tasers activated.  
  
He flings the door open and whirls around but Luke is already walking past him.  
  
"Interesting," Luke says and arches an eyebrow.  
  
Mess is the kindest word anyone could use. Half-built parts scattered around and piled up, wires trailing from one half-finished project and into the next. This isn't the sterile, sealed environment that the janitors and techs preen over whenever Tony would deign to visit R&D. No gleaming counters or inspirational posters. No soft elevator musical statistically proven to sharpen focus and relieve stress. Tony slaps his equipment, shoves it and dents it, kicks it every time it sparks and burns him, back and forth in a gleeful masochistic exchange that the techs never share with their delicate toys. He earns it every time they work and they earn it every time he bleeds.  
  
Tony glares at Luke. "Bullshit it goes null. It doesn't just _stop_."  
  
"The brightstone?" Luke leans against a counter like he owns it, like his personal space is a royal embassy he graces others access to. "Iron makes it stop. The impurities just make the discharge unstable," he says slowly.  
  
"Don't use that tone. Not with me. Never with me. I know this shit. My tech is in over over half the crap Stark Industries sells these days. Energy doesn't just _stop_ , that's like... that's a  _rule_ or something, it violates the laws of physics and--" He stops and he's shaking and Tony jabs a finger at the stranger. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"I believe I was dragged down in the wake of your drunken stupor." Luke examines his fingernails. "A pathetic display, but whatever the execution, I suppose I must applaud your results. I'm right where you want me to be."  
  
"Right where-- I don't even know you!"  
  
Luke's hands are long and his fingers slender, nails painted dark in a manner that would be prissy on anyone else but seem to suit him just fine. "I made an offer a while back."  
  
"Patron." Tony spits the word out. "Like you were for my dad. That... Yeah. That did him a world of good, didn't it?" Now he's the one that has to lean back and his head swims fast enough he wonders if he'll drown. "Right into the damned ground."  
  
Soft footsteps and Tony looks up. Luke's close, only an arm length away. "Are you going to ask me why I didn't save him?"  
  
Tony furrows his brow and curls his fingers around the edge of the countertop digging into his lower back. "He had a heart attack. Died in his sleep. Old age. Stress. It happens."  
  
"Yes," Luke says. "It happens. In such a primitive manner, but it happens."  
  
"What's that supposed to..." Tony shakes his head. "You keep talking in circles."  
  
"And you keep meeting me at every tangent. Almost."  
  
Brightstones. Iron. But it's all rushing away and he's crashing, not quite, but almost. Skirting that edge where what's right in front of him turns bright and crystalline, holding still for a few glorious moments so Tony can take it apart and maybe even put it back together again once he peels himself up from the tile and finds his head again. He's hit the wall and everything is narrowing down and  
  
brightstone  
  
and  
  
iron  
  
and  
  
Luke's hands on his shoulders. Green eyes and thin lips pressed together in a disapproving line. "An answer, Anthony. A proper one."  
  
Green is all Tony can see.  
  
"I could have been banging one of those chicks from Alfheim now, you know. Timed this perfect, didn't you, asshole? Knew right when I was... Right when I would..." His words slur together and he almost begins reciting the alphabet backwards out of habit. "Gave up a good time for this..."  
  
"Your answer," Luke growls.  
  
Tony kisses him.  
  
He has to lean up (tall, lanky bastard) to capture Luke's mouth. Luke tastes like the beer, tastes tart and salty and Tony wonders if that's blood he's tasting. Luke goes stiff but Tony's no stranger to that, licks at the rim of his lower lip and captures it between his teeth and Luke's hands tighten on his shoulders but he doesn't push Tony away. Not until Tony leans back, face flushed, eyes bright, and grinning sharp enough his smile almost bleeds. "Fuck you. Expecting that answer?"  
  
Luke shoves him to the counter, sends him sprawling. Pins Tony's hands down and forces a thigh between his knees. Sharp breath, hot breath, against Tony's face, Tony's throat. "No," Luke says. "But it will do."  
  
Luke's mouth is hot on his own, but it's not a kiss. Not with that much teeth, that much heat, not with the whole of his body thrown into it and weighing Tony down. Not sucking sharp on his tongue and spreading him wide, not just legs and jaw, but eviscerating far deeper than that, a hot spark that thrills down Tony's spine and makes the world go still and dark.  
  
Tony bites down. Draws blood. Licks it from Luke's mouth and tries to do it again.  
  
"Ah... That's enough. That's enough, Anthony. I accept."  
  
Something in him breaks at those words. Enough, it's enough. No try harder, no do it again, no work out the kinks or streamline the process. Tony's shaking and his chest heaves and copper is hot and bright on his tongue. "Enough?"  
  
Luke smiles, slow and dark and his mouth is crimson. "You are enough."  
  
"Yeah. Yeah. This is good." The edges of his vision go gray and Tony struggles to stay awake. "Yeah, I... yeah.  Patron. I can work with that. With you. Go for it." He sprawls wantonly beneath Luke, tries to at least, but manages only to stretch and dangle his feet. He wiggles his hips instead.  
  
Gentle brush of lips at his brow and Luke's long fingers stroking the hair away from his face. "Not right now."  
  
Soft words that Tony can't make out, singsong and indistinct. Lullaby? He lets go, goes into the dark, and waits to see what follows.  
  
\-----  
  
He's alone the next morning, a book of Norse runes left on his table.  
  
\-----  
  
"Your design specs are fucking ridiculous." Tony sprawls out on his back glaring up at the innards of a suspended above him. He gropes about until he feels metal press against his hand and he can tell from the grooves and the dents in that fingertip's worth of touch it's the wrong gauge wrench.  
  
"So I have been told."  
  
Tony sets his palms against the concrete floor and propels himself out where he has room to stretch and pop his back and proper line of sight to aim a glare at Luke. "No, seriously. This is bullshit."  
  
"So you have said."  
  
The designs are laid out on the floor nearby. Tough, thick pages that are the wrong sort of fleshy to be leather but close enough that Tony doesn't want to think what else they might be made of. They are inscribed with runes he learned the weekend before Luke's scheduled visit. Tony works on his cars in the garage and hasn't yet brought the damned things into his workshop. He glares at them. No amount of grease or dust on the floor can cling to them, instead, each page is as clean and pristine as his showroom floor above where he displays the healthy cars. It's a very dangerous sort of interesting.  
  
Tony smells tea. Looks up.  
  
Luke, he has learned, has the annoying and amusing trick of pulling things out of thin air. Tea supplies, books, small canes. Nothing with a mass over five pounds, organic matter but nothing living, no liquids or fires. A hat but no rabbit sort of trick. He tries hard not to think about conservation of mass or the amount of energy required to fold space like that. But he's never _not_ been able to think, not with Luke pulling the sleight of hand right in front of him, not with a smile that promises all of the answers but none of the questions that will make them make sense.  
  
Luke sits primly on an overturned crate, one knee tucked neatly over the other and Tony wonders what he would look like sprawled out on a throne, gold glittering at his brow to bring out the acid emerald of his smile. Luke looks like that sort of guy. But instead Luke is tidy and proper and looking oddly engrossed in watching Tony procrastinate.  
  
"You're asking me to... No, actually, I'm not sure _what_ you're asking me to do here." Tony twists about and rocks back on his heels until he can stagger back up to his feet. "I mean, it _almost_ looks like you're just asking me to scale up Dad's old designs, but you're asking me to ignore basic fucking physics here."  
  
Luke's lips quirk in one of those little smirks Tony has loved learning how to hate. "So I have said."  
  
"Alright, you damned mynah bird!" Really hate. He stomps over to the designs specs Luke provided and plops on the floor next to them. Lines of light blue hum and glide along the edges of the papers. Not parchment, he wasn't going to call it parchment until he knew what sort of skin--if even that--it was made of. Tony waves his hand over it and the blue shimmer follows and grows, arching towards him like low gravity flowers from an alien planet. Realm. Whatever.  It doesn't matter. It's magic and he can't take it apart as much as he'd like to, not with Luke giving him express instructions not to. (It's a rule they'll both know he'll break, the only surprise is how long he'll wait.)  
  
"So I have--"  
  
"Shut it!" Tony snaps and glares when Luke looks at him with fond annoyance. "Look. Here." He jabs at hand at the designs and the schematics blossom for him. Three dimensions and near infinite zoom and he'd nearly needed a [change of pants] after realizing the implications of that. "Since you're not telling me what the hell you want me to plug in there, everything else is just... It's variables. You want me to build a damned conduit, fine. I can do that. But I have to know what it's being build to withstand here, at least what _spectrum_ it falls under."  
  
Luke takes a sip of his tea. "Part of this is reliant upon you discovering details as you go along and inventing new ones to fill in the gaps. You have a... unique perspective on magic. I don't want that contaminated."  
  
Tony bristles, shoulders tight and thrust back. "'Unique' hell! I'm so far advanced they don't even have a _name_ for my field!"  
  
"Precisely."  
  
Praise and challenge and Tony is helpless under the combination. "You don't want me repeating someone else's mistakes."  
  
"I want you to make your own."  
  
Tony snorts. "Those are the best kind."  
  
\-----  
  
"You're like a damned tomcat, I swear."  
  
Tony is thirty now.  
  
Luke sits at the kitchen table and eats a bowl of cereal.  
  
"And those are my strawberries." Tony grabs the bowl of fruit and pulls it across the table towards himself.  
  
"And your milk and your cereal and your bowls. Quite astute. You can recognize your own property." His lips quirk. "Without marking it with urine. Doubly impressive."  
  
"Hey, not my fault everything I touch turns to gold or otherwise bears the mark of my brilliance."  
  
"Gold? Perhaps you do, then."  
  
That, Tony has found, is Luke's most charming trait. He puts up with nothing and everything at the same time, all of it with the same unflappable sarcasm Tony has come to relish engaging. "So what is it this time? Or do I have to guess that, too? I realize you get half your kicks just watching me bash my head against shit until I figure it out, but I figure, hey, maybe once, just this _once_ he'll throw me a bone that isn't cursed and I'll get a head start without the usual brain trauma." Two hours of sleep has him rambling and on edge but if he goes back to bed now he'll crash and there just isn't time for that.  
  
"You need to sleep."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Sleep. In a bed," Luke says.  
  
"That an invitation?" Tony wags his eyebrows.  
  
Luke arches his own.  
  
Tony slumps over the table, head propped on his fist. "So it's one of _those_ visits? Right? I get 'em from Obie all the time. 'Are you eating right, Tony? That last girl looked sketchy, did you get tested again, just in case, Tony? When are you going to sleep, Tony?"  
  
No answer and Tony takes that as incentive to keep going.  
  
"You're worse than Pepper. I think she cares a little at least. Pities more like, but that's better than the looks I get from Obie. From you? Hell. Who knows? I bet you've got more layers there than an onion. You just sit there and stare at me and let me rattle on. No one else does that."  
  
"Letting you run out of steam is the quickest way to get you to shut up."  
  
"See? That's what I miss from our little visits. That sharp wit. Pepper doesn't banter with me like that. Just 'Yes, Mr. Stark. Would you like anything else, Mr Stark?' with that little smile like she _knows_ I'm bullshitting and really, I don't deserve her. You hired her for me, didn't you?"  
  
Luke sits his spoon down next to his empty bowl and leans back in his chair. "Nothing of the sort. Your hiring firm would have handled that, I imagine."  
  
"Yeah, but you sent her. Recommended her. Got her through the door. Might even have been one of her references. Which one was it? The internship in Paris? District attorney assistant?" Tony narrows his eyes and Luke widens his in mock innocence. "Good, but a bit too classy for Obie's tastes. I know I didn't finalize her hire, that's for damned sure."  
  
"I might have put in a word here or there."  
  
"Obie runs more towards blondes than redheads." He's bristling, he knows it, but doesn't bother at all to hide his reaction. "Just slid her right into place. You knew just the sort of person I needed and--"  
  
"Paved the way for her to make her own impression," Luke said. Another smirk, almost affectionate. "No amount of wealth from any of the nine realms could have made her stay if she didn't want to, Anthony. Not if she didn't relish the challenge. Or, stars forbid, actually _care_ for you in some fashion."  
  
"What's your name?"  
  
Luke gets up from the table and starts making coffee instead of answer the question. Fresh grounds and fresh water, all of it set up in an ancient percolator that predated the second great war. "Why do you insist on this relic? I've sent you something much more efficient than this."  
  
"Still in the box and you know why I don't use it. Name. Gimme. What is it?" Tony drums his fingers against the table. You do this all the damned time, you know. Get up and start fiddling with shit when you don't want to talk. I'd say I'm getting tired of it, but honestly, that's about the only way my dishes ever get done." The words rattle out of him loose and easy and Tony let's them come to see where they'll go. "I bet you've got some long and embarrassing name that everybody shortens down to a tacky nickname, right? Something monosyllabic, maybe sounds too Midgard for your tastes, something like Bob, right? Or Sue. I bet your name is Sue."  
  
He can't remember when he last slept.  
  
"That's only one cup of coffee. I know you think Midgard tech is quaint and all and you like to pretend you don't know how to use shit, but I know you know how to make coffee. You aren't making me a cup, are you, Sue?"  
  
Luke hums and wags a finger at him without turning around.  
  
Tony tries to count the hours since he last slept, when it was full and proper and not hours stolen from him in the middle of his workshop. The numbers pile up and spill around him, minutes dripping through his fingers and catching under his tongue as he tries to name them.  
  
"Did Pepper send you?" he asks.  
  
"No."  
  
He pushes away from the table and pulls himself to his feet and tries to ignore the creak of his chair and his spine. "I'm working on something, let's go see it."  
  
"I'd much rather see you sleep," Luke says. His lips are pursed and his brow is pinched and these are the only moments Tony sees any sort of age or mark on Luke's face, as though the trials and tribulations of dealing with mortals were enough to send the clock hands sweeping across Luke's face where the mere passage of time could not.  
  
Tony ignores him and keeps walking, leaves the tiny, cramped corner that passes for a kitchenette behind. A table and a counter and some cabinets, more a shrine for the gods of java than anything else. It's all kinetic memory, one footstep after another down the stairs and he's back in his workshop.  
  
Back where he belongs.  
  
"Anthony."  
  
"I've got a cot down here somewhere, calm down." He waves a hand in the general direction of a corner. "Somewhere over there."  
  
"You need rest."  
  
"What did my mother's perfume smell like?" Tony asks.  
  
Luke is silent.  
  
That, Tony has learned, is the quickest way to get him to shut up  
  
"I know it was some sort of flower." He picks up an item (spare part or main component? he can't remember) and puts it down again. "Real fancy, she told everyone she imported it from Alfheim, only grew in the fairy mists or some such shit." Tony sits down and gets back up, walks over to his workbench only to lean against it. "Grew it in the backyard, no one ever knew the difference. She..." He stops his slow ricochet. "She..."  
  
Questions about Howard, about Maria. His father's favorite color, his mother's favorite song. Tiny details far away that Tony knows but can never remember to recall until these fever bright moments. He wonders if Luke doesn't answer out of some distant discomfort or distaste or if he was so far removed from their lives despite his influence that he does not know.  
  
"She thought it was hilarious." Tony scratches the stubble along his chin. "I'm having trouble with the insulation."  
  
"Insulation?" Luke echoes.  
  
"The materials you provided work just fine. Conduct it right along, but they burn out. Poof!" His fingers flex and expand to hold a tiny cloud of imaginary smoke. "It was one of those flowers that sort of sticks in your nose if it's too much, but she always made it classy." Tony frowns and his hands drift to his sides. "I need something stronger. What about uru, that star metal or something? I keep hearing about that stuff, supposed to be extra durable or something. Kinda hard to get any specific details. It wasn't... It wasn't roses. I think."  
  
He drifts between flowers and schematics with fluid dream logic. Cool fingertips rub tiny circles into his brow and Tony curls his hands into loose fists to keep from pulling them away.  
  
"Uru will be very difficult to acquire," he hears Luke say from miles away even though it's only a few inches that separate them. There's a second of silence that stretches on for a century before Luke speaks again. "It is very scarce amidst the Nine Realms. Is there nothing on Midgard that will suffice?"  
  
Tony leans forward and lets his head drop to Luke's shoulder. "Nothing that'll hold up under the charge and still conduct thaums worth a shit. Needs to balance. Energy conduction, yeah, but... Physically strong enough to handle the vibrations." He laughs into Luke's shirt and hits that high pitch that always makes him wince upon remembering. "Vibrations, fuck. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I can't remember what she smelled like."  
  
Luke is silent.  
  
"Why is this the only time you come around?" He tries to stand up straight, but Luke's hands catch his shoulders and hold him still. "Mind you, I'm at my most brilliant when I'm half out of my head, but by the time you roll around, my five o'clock shadow has hit midnight."  
  
"You are at your most honest like this."  
  
Tony snorts into something too sturdy to be silk but too soft to be cotton. "Just because I'm not lying doesn't mean I'm telling the truth."  
  
Luke quirks his head at that, Tony can feel the tilt and shift of his head. "Where did you learn of uru?" he asks quietly.  
  
"Heard about it." Tony shrugs. "Around. Grapevine, world tree, you know how it is."  
  
"That is usually very guarded information."  
  
"Yeah. It is, isn't it?"  
  
Luke goes stiff.  
  
"Funny, really," Tony says into the warmth of Luke's throat. "Tourists leaving Midgard all the time now. See the sights, slay the dragons. That sort of stuff." His fingers curl into Luke's shirt, curl under and over until he clenches it tight in his fists. "Should be easy to get a damned ticket or something, just to poke around, right?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Yeah, not really." Shouldn't be pushing this now, shouldn't dive into it with Luke standing so rigid against him, not when Tony can only murmur against Luke's throat like he's delivering confession to a statue. "Wouldn't let me pass. No Bifrost, no backdoors. Nothing. None of them... None of them would just let me _see_."  
  
Soft hand against the back of his head and Tony knows Luke could snap his neck with a twitch, a flick, with an accident that had occurred so very many times until the other realms learned just how fragile mortals were. He knows this, but it has never occurred to him to be afraid.  
  
"I must have... Must have pissed somebody off, huh? Wrong ambassador's daughter or something. Couple... Just a couple quiet words from high on up. Sometimes that's all it takes, right?" He doesn't wait for Luke to answer, doesn't give him room. "Has to be that, right? Not somebody looking out for me, wanting to keep me out of trouble. Because... Yeah. Lord knows that's right where I'll be out there. Poking into everything just to see it fall apart. Build it back up again. Pepper does that sometimes. Just cleans up the mess before I know it's there."  
  
He nuzzles into Luke's neck and feels him relax. It's silent admission, nothing either of them want to say or to break open and that's as close as they can come. Someone else keeping him safe from himself. Someone else who laid out another unspoken rule and there would be no surprise at all when he broke it.  
  
"Tell me."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Everything. The flower. Your name. What I'm building. What's out there. Why you need something that can hold a fucking _star_ in your back pocket."  
  
Luke pulls back and presses his lips to Tony's brow, his nose, his mouth.  
  
His kisses are always off center.  
  
"There isn't enough time."  
  
Tony snorts. "Sure there is. Gotta meeting in... A few hours... I think. Pepper'll tell me. Plenty of time for--"  
  
"Not for this."  
  
Tony glares up at him again. "Try me. Puny mortal brain and all, I might be able to handle it." He's hurtling towards some caustic clarity that will do nothing but burn the truth into ashes before he can forge it into something that can survive until he can sleep and wake up instead of pass out and crawl back to his feet. "Gotta... Yeah. Gotta keep the tricks of the trade secret and all, esoteric brotherhood. Yeah. But I could do better if--"  
  
"This is enough."  
  
"What?"  
  
"What you have done." Luke sighs and pulls back enough that he can gently pry Tony's hands away. "It is enough. You have done more than I could have hoped for, but I fear this is the limit to what can be achieved for now. I have to wait until the rest of Midgard catches up to you, Anthony."  
  
"The hell you do!" Tony flings Luke's hands off. "I've accomplished _miracles_ with what little you've given me to work with. I followed your instructions, your schematics, worked with your materials, and when _that_ wasn't enough, I made up my own! And now you're going to... Going to _what_ , exactly? Give _my_ work to someone else? I don't care if you want to play patron with somebody else, but that's _my_ work now!"  
  
Luke steps back and it's the space between Midgard and Asgard, the space between an empty hand and a cup of tea, and Tony knows that Luke will _never_ teach him the trick of how to fold that space away. "Your technology will start a revolution," Luke promises. "One man can start that revolution. But one man cannot change the world. Not by himself. You have done your part. That is all I can ask of you Anthony."  
  
"I'm Tony Stark. I've _already_ changed the world."  
  
Luke smiles, sad and slow and ancient. "Yes. You have. But not enough."  
  
Tony charges forward, a full march in a single step, and grabs Luke's shirt again and hauls the man after him. "You want to know what I'm doing here? What I've got to offer?" Luke follows and Tony doesn't know if it's out of pity or curiosity and he doesn't know which would be worse.  
  
The old design specs, the original, long since replaced multiple times over with new additions, old corrections, and crabbed handwriting in the margins that never glowed as bright as Luke's runes. Tony shoves them aside. Beneath are bright metal and sharp runic circuits etched, the blue shimmer of ancient sorcery slowly feed into neat, fractal lines that overlaid and overran one another in dizzying tangles of logic and chaos and wires that feed into a pile of dull scrap metal.  
  
"Dummy! Wake up!" Tony slams a fist on the table.  
  
The scrap metal stirs.  
  
It is ungainly and awkward, little more than a single arm with grasping pincers fixed to a motorized base. A camera clicks and whirs and the pincers open and close in a slow, mechanical yawn. The arm straightens. Points at them.  
  
Tony beams at the machine and at Luke and back at the machine again. "Dummy, Luke. Luke, Dummy. Go on. Say hello."  
  
Dummy clicks and sputters and Tony worries that might be asking too much too soon, but the camera focuses first on Tony and then on Luke, and it extends it's shaking metal arm towards Luke in greeting.  
  
"What is this?" Luke says.  
  
"Dummy. A robot. A learning, living robot." Tony shrugs and his face is flushed and bright and a grin stretches his face. He shrugs. "Well, for any given definition of living, I guess. He can't make more of himself, thank God, and he's downright useless right now." He gives Dummy a solid thump and the robot shudders and arches into the touch. "You guys have got those, what do you call 'em, golems? Familiars, whatever? I've seen 'em here. Braindead little things. They follow instructions and that's great, but you break those instructions and they just keep breaking themselves trying to follow, but none of them _grow,_ none of them _change_ , that's why Dummy--Obie named him, not me--is so much better for being so freaking useless and Luke, _this_ is what I can do with your stuff, not just build a bigger battery! This is what Midgard can offer to the Realms, not just tourists and vacation souvenirs!"  
  
Panting and manic and he waits for it, waits for the slow smile of congratulations and satisfaction, waits for that light to come back to Luke's eyes.  
  
It doesn't.  
  
Dummy still holds out its metal arm, extending its pincers like an open palm.  
  
"Well done. Truly, Anthony. It is." He turns away, steps back.  
  
"That's it?"  
  
"Do you wish me to write your praises among the heavens?"  
  
Tony reaches out and gently pushes Dummy's arm down. "That'd be a good start, yeah," he says through clenched teeth. "Midgard trinket not quite good enough? Or I finally break some rule you care about?" He points at his robot. "This is what I do in my spare time! What makes you think I can't crack open whatever project you toss at me? You can't spare any of your precious star metal uru, fine, I'll make my own or make something better out of pocket lint and a shower curtain!"  
  
Silence.  
  
"You chose me for a purpose, what was it?"  
  
Luke looks away.  
  
"Tell me!"  
  
Luke folds his hands. Opens them. A tiny galaxy blooms between his palms. Stars, but no constellation Tony can recognize. Flings his hands wider and fills the room, fills the sky, with these new stars, all of them small precious green stones. Emerald and period, jade and malachite, all of them set to the slow, steady pulse that Tony knows as the shade of Luke's magic. One grows dim. Then another. It spreads, a tiny, jerking stop motion of entropy. No supernova or final defiant gasp. Just a dull dimming.  
  
"It spreads," Luke says softly. "It will reach Midgard and through it the rest of the Nine Realms. Three centuries, perhaps. Five. I am not certain. But even that, I fear, is simply not enough time, Anthony. I am sorry."  
  
"You're whining about not having enough centuries and you can't spare five minutes?"  
  
"Can you?" Luke says. He stalks towards Tony, striding through the heart of a dead galaxy, every inch of him sharp and tense. "Can you promise me your _lifetime_ , brief as it is, for something that will not reach your world in your lifetime? How many hours? How many years? Even now you push yourself until you bleed and still even that is not enough!" (There is an echo to Luke's words and Tony wonders which one of the two of them he's talking to.) "You will burn yourself up, Anthony, you already do, and I have no use for fools who would rather glory in the ashes!"  
  
"Because you don't trust me!" Tony snaps. "How many layers deep is this? How many other people do you have working for you like this? How close did _any_ of them get? You cut them out, too?" Shaking and he's tired, needs to sleep, needs to rest, but he never can, not and get anything done, not and get anything said. "Who else knows you need a weapon that can take out someone who destroys stars?"  
  
"What?"  
  
It's the only time Tony has ever seen surprise on Luke's face.  
  
It makes him look young.  
  
"If... if it was just some natural disaster, you'd have Asgard and all the Heims up on that. But you're taking some backdoor approach, so it's somebody you're afraid of, somebody _they're_ afraid of, and how desperate are you that you need  _mortals_ working on your shit?" Tony sways back and forth. "Let me help you."  
  
Luke just stands there. Stares.  
  
Tony tries to close the space between them even as the edges of his vision go dark. Hands on Luke's shoulders, clutching and holding himself upright.  
  
"No. You cannot."  
  
"Why?"  
  
Luke smiles. Tony never wants to see him again if it means never seeing that look of loss and mourning. "There just isn't enough time." Cool fingertips brush against Tony's neck, to his brow. "Go to sleep. You have done enough and for that I thank you. Just live your life Anthony. That is all I ask of you now."  
  
Another off center kiss.  
  
The world goes dark and Tony knows it isn't because he's falling.  
  
He crawls back to his feet, muscles aching, and he knows he's been laying on the floor for hours.  
  
Dummy clatters in its corner, moves as far as it can while still spread out and tethered to the workbench, brains laid out for Tony to fix and shape and improve. It clutches a flower in its pincers, jerking as it tries to offer it to Tony.  
  
Hyacinth.  
  
Fresh cut and already wilting.  
  
\-----  
  
He wakes up the next morning to the phone ringing in his ears. The phone clatters to the floor the first time he tries to answer it. He picks it up again. "Myuh?"  
  
"Mr Stark." Pepper, and her voice cold enough to extinguish a volcano. "You are late for your meeting."  
  
"Am I?" Tony says. He rolls over on his back and stares up at the ceiling. "Maybe I'm just early for the next time."  
  
"No. These are important investors and one more time, honestly, one more time is all it will take for there to never be a next time!" Pepper says in that tight, low tone she uses when she's trying to fuss at him in public and still be professional about it.  
  
Cracks in the ceiling and he knows Dummy is waiting for him downstairs.  
  
"You know what, Pep, that's fine. In fact, that's so fine, I'm giving myself a vacation. I'm giving you a vacation, too, just add it to that pile you've already accumulated. Maybe I should just get you shoes or something. That designer purse you were talking about, you never use your damned vacation time anyway." He keeps talking and can't make out a word she's saying, which, really, is the point. "Maui's nice this time of year. Maybe Tahiti. Find a beach and some babes."  
  
He hangs up.  
  
Pepper will call back in about an hour. She always waits an hour, just in case, that's her average for stalling for him.  
  
He'll already be on the plane by then.  
  
After all.  
  
He's got all the time in the world.


End file.
